I’ve always been a documenter and a journaller in various forms. Ever since I learned to write I’ve been recording stories, and it’s become a pretty essential part of my identity.
Project Life gives me a really great format in which to record family stories and document everyday life, but I’ve found recently that I’ve been craving a less structured form of journalling just for myself. I’ve wanted to make room in my creative time for a little more experimentation. A little more… well, messiness.
I was a bit unsure about how to approach this, but I’d noticed lots of posts on my instagram feed tagged #getmessyartjournal, and it piqued my interest. A bunch of crafters whose work I really like were doing cool shit as part of that community, and I finally decided I needed to know more, so I joined up.
I have to tell you, guys, it was a really great decision.
The Get Messy community is a bunch of incredibly imaginative, creative people, encouraging each other to make beautiful things. Caylee and Lauren facilitate a wicked blog and FB group, full of inspiring prompts and tutorials, and everyone is just super happy to be there supporting each other.
It’s amazing.
The community operates in seasons, each of which has a loose theme to tie it together. The current one is ‘words’. Here are some of the things I’ve made as part of the theme…
White out poem:
“Come cheerfully singing,
incapable of flight.
Crash noisily,
converse in harsh voices,
Cry ‘knowledge has been cut and burnt
to make room for regret.’”
One of my favourite quotes. It encourages me to write, even when I’m scared to.
A white out poem for SJ:
“Love with assiduity
Nothing in the world
Falls beyond the light of it.
(It will suit us admirably).”
“Surplus ornamentation,
turbulent magnificence
and enormous, perplexingly black fear.
I was enchanted.”
I’ve been loving playing with watercolours, inks, and gesso, just seeing how they interact and what they can do.
I’ve been loving practising my brush lettering, because it makes me write slowly and think about words differently.
I’ve been loving everything about this process, and the journal that’s coming out of it.
Getting Messy is brilliant.